We’ve had one of the most exciting months for Buffer for Business. In it’s first month of public launch, which we’ve been lucky to have seen received so well, Buffer for Business already grabbed 23.9% of total Buffer revenue and all other metrics have also grown substantially.
Here is an insight in all our numbers from December:
Revenue
Here is how we did in terms of revenue:
- Total Recurring Revenue from Jun – Nov: $19,190
- New Monthly Recurring Revenue from December: $15,850
- Total Monthly Recurring Revenue December: = $32,491
- Total revenue December = $56,208
Conversions
There was a total of 345 new paying customers in December, out of the 3009 trials started in December. That is 11.5% conversion from trial to paying user (versus 13.2% in Nov).
What was the conversion rate for each channel?| Source | Conversion rate | Converted | Trials | |
| Landing page (‘false’) | 12% | 102 | 938 | |
| Web Popup | 8% | 88 | 1099 | |
| App Header | 66% | 58 | 88 | |
| Pricing (Awesome) | 13% | 18 | 138 | |
| App Modal | 53% | 8 | 15 | |
| Billing Page | 58% | 7 | 12 | |
| Web Analytics | 15% | 4 | 26 | |
| Blog Bottom | 60% | 3 | 5 | |
| Launch Post | 18% | 3 | 17 | |
| Twitter Holidays | 2% | 2 | 124 | |
11.5% of people who started a trial converted to paying users (345 out of 3009). There were 2972 new total trials started in December.
Growth
Here is a breakdown in terms the % of growth happening to all of our numbers in December:
- 69.3% increase in MRR (from $19,190 to $32,491)
- 156% increase in total revenue (from $22250 to $56,208) (versus 27% MoM decline in Nov)
- Buffer for Business is 23.9% of total Buffer revenue ( from 11.4% last month)
- 222% increase in new paying Business users (from 107 to 345)
- 260% increase in new trials started (From 826 to 2,972)
Total users on Business
| Month | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Total | ||||
| Large | 2 | 6 | 1 | 10 | 15 | ||||
| Medium | 7 | 9 | 12 | 9 | 43 | ||||
| Small | 101 | 89 | 95 | 326 | 596 | ||||
| Total | 110 | 104 | 108 | 345 | 654 | ||||
Outlook and thoughts
2X growth in both trials and new paying usersWe saw that “Landing page” and “Web popup” are driving the highest volume of trials and subsequent signups, albeit at a lower conversion rate.
“App Modal” and “App Header” converted the most trials into paying users, which means that people converting from Awesome remain the most engaged users, with the highest likelihood to upgrade
Conversion rate stabilizingWhile the conversion rate trended down (from 13% to 11% in December), we see that as healthy and stabilizing with the significant growth in trials starting.
Conclusion
With the official launch of Business plan in December, we see growth kicked into high gears. We expect organic growth to sustain in the coming month as we launch more core features, beyond the ones announced recently.
We are also looking into paid advertising channels including Google, Twitter and Facebook, as well as retargeting. This will be a key focus for our marketing efforts, as already mentioned in our previous report.
PS: In case you’re interested, you can see November’s report here and the full Buffer update with all revenues and numbers from December.
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